Response to Intervention - VDOE to Intervention Cohort training session: ... is going to give you concrete examples, ... everybody has GPS right, or have seen them? Yeah,

Response to Intervention Cohort training session:

Process Evaluation: Is it Working?

Session 1

July 12 - July 13, 2012 Virginia Beach, Virginia

Sponsored by the Virginia Department of Education

Office of Student Services

Response to Intervention Cohort training session: Process Evaluation: Is it Working?

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VA_DOE_RTI_Session_1_7_12_2012_PART2.mp3 Application of VTSS Benchmarks for Evaluation: – 9:45 am – Noon

The Virginia Tiered Systems of Supports Manual Kevin Davis, Center for Persons with Disabilities State Project Coordinator Utah State University 00:00:00 Dr. Cave: Kevin is here, Davis to talk to you about the tiered systems, setting up, using those benchmarks to help you evaluate where you are in your implementation. Melissa is going to give you concrete examples, and then we’re going to share with you your own data. Dale Mann interactive, you know that they do our evaluation for this entire initiative, and they're going to be here with panelists from some of your school divisions tomorrow. So we’re looking at different ways to evaluate, it’s my pleasure to introduce Kevin Davis. He’s a consultant with Technical Assistance Center for Excellence in Special Education at Utah State University. He is a former school psychologist, Kevin is someone we came to know through Steve Kukic, he has written the draft manual that you picked up this morning, Virginia Tiered Systems of Support Benchmarks. He understands our system, he understands RtI in Virginia, and he is going to provide to us frameworks for evaluation. And we’re awfully glad to have him here, glad he could come, and where is he? 00:01:02 Dr. Cave: He’s behind the podium. He disappeared, so you have your, you’re ready, you’re on, all right. Mr. Davis: Okay welcome, thank you for having me. You know, last night as I was going through everything, and your handout is, this seems really loud. Can you all hear me now? Is that better? Okay, you know me now. The handout we’ll be working from is yes, and there is also a yellow one, I’m going to move away. I seem to be getting feedback everywhere, okay right here. Okay, all the way up, okay. 00:02:02 Mr. Davis: Okay, so a little bit about me. First of all, literally I was the kid all the teachers kind of liked having class, but hated because I would never sit still. I’m also highly excited and passionate, so if I start talking too fast feel free to say wait, slow


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down, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Not understanding, but I can understand you because I talk too fast. I realize that, we have no interpreters in the room right? Good, two less people to hate me, so anyway as, last night as I was coming in the all star baseball game, Kansas City there were two airplanes leaving Kansas City yesterday with empty seats. The airplane I was on had mechanical, so I had an extra like six hours of airport time to sit and look at the presentation. 00:03:01 Mr. Davis: Which is one of the reasons why you’ll have this handout that has some of the big concepts in it and not my actual slides. Because I’m playing with them, and thinking about it, and it’s really kind of more to keep me on track than to give you guys a lot of information. A lot of this will be kind of work and conversations back and forth with you, so if there is something up here that you want email me, let me know, I’ll get it to you. But for the most part I think the big concepts are either here, or in the implementation guide. Okay, and it’s like sometimes I realized I was calling it manual, sometimes guide, this is a very important document. Anyway as I was sitting there kind of thinking about it I kind of started to feel like a big fraud. Because not because it’s wrong or anything, but what you guys see in here is hopefully your work. 00:04:00 Mr. Davis: One of my, one of the things I think I’m best at is being able to work with people and look what they’re doing and talk to people that are involved, and help them synthesize that into something that makes sense. And that kind of gives them a direction of what to do. One of my favorite books, that kind of helped me, and it’s in your other readings on the last page, is Reeve’s Book, Finding Your Leadership Focus. And it really kind of talks about, you know, there are a lot of good things out there. Some are more good than others, but there is lots of good things out there. But you know, we can’t do everything. We have to be intentional, and choose, you know, what it is that we’re really talking about. And some of the things you’ll see in the manual, you know, where we’re talking about communication, part of it is as you’re understanding of things get better the sophistication of our language gest better and we become more meaningful and specific about the terms we choose. You know, for example response to intervention. 00:05:00 Mr. Davis: Instead of, or you know, as we moved into Virginia Tiered System of Supports, what’s the difference? How many of you have picked up something in the last week or month about RtI? More than one, more than one thing about RtI? Did they say the same things? Were they consistent? Were either of them necessarily wrong in your views? Probably not, but there is a lot of different things that kind of go together to make these different views of RtI. Each one of those models kind of has a, they have


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different advantages and disadvantages to them. And you know, as I looked through all the great presenters you guys had, honestly as I went through those, you know, the presentations, the trainings you guys had, the manuals that your Department of Education has provided in the vision, I looked at the work and the tools that you all have been doing. 00:06:00 Mr. Davis: And it’s just like, you know, what is the essence of, what are these critical things to try to figure out, you know, to help a division leadership team through those. The manual is initially kind of written with the idea of, you know, for divisions that are just trying to get off the start. And you know, where do we even start, how do we approach this. But it is also very useful thing for buildings of divisions that have started into it, and need to go back and refine the system. It’s like, you know, kind of think about what’s working, what’s not working for us, and on track. Hopefully the clicker works. Woo hoo, you know, so in my thinking I kind of, we kind of have big three chunks. We have this vision. The vision kind of tells us where we’re gonna go, the, the what we’re going to achieve and these type things. The benchmarks are getting a little bit more specific, and implantation manual, which is kind of a guide. My mind thinks in pictures. And pictures on here are not near as vivid as the ones in my mind. 00:07:00 Mr. Davis: But it’s safer for you, so you know, vision yeah this doesn’t require therapy usually. This piece, no you have this big map, lots of options to get where you’re going. You’re gonna go, you’re going to see the volcano; you’re going to see these great things. These are the great things you’re going to see, this is the vision we all know where we’re going to go, how we’re going to get there. Many roads to get there that is fine. The benchmark document, everybody has GPS right, or have seen them? Yeah, So you know, the benchmark is gonna go in and say you know, that little bitty section it’s not quite as straight as it looked. You know, along the way there are certain cities or certain things that we need to be looking out for and doing. That benchmark is gonna be, is providing you some of those guideposts along the way. But it still doesn’t tell you how do you get all those benchmarks in place? And that’s what the implementation manual does, it goes along and it helps you describe here are some possible ways to get those benchmarks in place and move that way. Is it the only way? No, but it’s kind of the best learning that we’re able to pull together from your state and the work that you all have been doing. 00:08:07 Mr. Davis: As well as some of them from across the nation, you know, I have been very very lucky to be involved with lots of great minds, lots of people smarter than me. Steve Kukic, George Batsche, Judy Elliott, Dave Tilley, Vanderheyden, you know, it’s, the


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who’s who, and I’m the nobody. You know, I’m, I’m lucky I get to tag along with them and occasionally run through ideas with them. So you know, through lots of conversations like you know, here are the things that, that seem to be the common elements that people, can work through these the best with. So anyway, so this implementation guide you can’t really see it, but there is like a little alert here that says school zone. Do you know GPSs, do all GPSs say like alert school zone things like that, no? Yeah I was kind of surprised when this one did, but so anyway we had these two big documents. 00:09:02 Mr. Davis: We have the benchmarks and the implementation guide, these are companion documents. You use them together, you cannot, you shouldn’t ignore one or the other. Within states that have done benchmarks one of the greatest things about benchmarks is it really starts defining and saying it allows people to come to this understanding of what is it that we are, and are not talking about? You know, because we can all agree to things such as, yes we believe that we should all intervene early with students. Does anybody disagree with that? If I said, that means that by the second day of school any student that needs intervention should be receiving intervention, doe anybody disagree with that? Yeah, and so, you know, I see, I see some no’s, I see some yes, and what we’re talking about here is, you know, there are some cultural differences here. 00:10:02 Mr. Davis: And it’s that, you know, we need to start being able to talk very specifically about what it means that, you know, what do we really mean and what do we not mean? And this is, you know, that communication, that trust. And so, you know, and in that example there is really no right or wrong answer. I could argue either way, but you know, it, it is one of those conversations, that’s an example of a conversation that I’ve heard many building teams have about, oh yeah we believe in that. But when we say implementation of that, you start getting some people going oh that’s not what I thought. That’s not what I mean, and so evaluation, the evaluation allows you to be able to check that, make sure that we’re really doing what we need to be doing. So we’ll be looking through this, these two documents work together. Give the benchmarks giving you the big broad, or giving you those, the indicators along the way. The implementation guide helping you walk through them and think about it. 00:11:01 Mr. Davis: There are a lot of things in it that kind of give you introductions to some concepts and some ideas, but there are entire books written on communication. I, you know, we did not want to rewrite a book on communication. How to run a leadership team, you know, they exist. Go get one. It’ll be better than anything that, you know, I


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can write. I promise you, but you know, I will reference some of the big concepts, and I tell you here are some resources and books that I encourage you to read. Such as Finding Your Leadership Focus, so anyway we look at it, they’re, they’re organized slightly different but kind of tied together. The implementation manual is organized around kind of the concept of, you know, what, what are the big components? The guide is organized more around what are the big concepts that we need to be working on, and who is responsible. We have this concept of leadership teams, what goes in, what is leadership team responsible for? 00:12:02 Mr. Davis: Some of the main primary responsibilities is about, you know, the leadership, the culture and structure, and the family community partnership. That, that is a leadership issue, so those three chunks of benchmarks you’ll see discussed within the implementation guide in the leadership section. Curriculum is pretty easy, instruction and problem solving tie together. You’ll also see an introduction, and we’ll spend, have you guys spend a little bit of time work, looking at that as well. So your benchmarks, everybody has their benchmarks right? Has seen them? Have, and they’re in the back of the guide. Have you all spent any time kind of evaluating and looking at the benchmarks and how you’re doing? What I would like you to take just a few minutes to do here is on the last page of the manual, is the benchmarks. 00:13:00 Mr. Davis: And if you have this, there is one for evaluation plan. And what I would like you to do is to just individually look at that, and read through those, and without, without a whole lot of, without discussion at you reteam, just say individually this is where I think we are with evaluation. Don’t have a conversation about it yet, just think about this for yourself. Can I get you to help me hand it out, one per team. Yeah, yeah, or yeah one per division team. Yeah. [Tape Cuts] The chair…everybody hear me still? Again? Okay, so now what I would like you guys to do also we handed out a single sheet that has the benchmarks on it. 00:14:05 Mr. Davis: Because I, I want everybody there is also dots on your table now. I want you to make a graph. So without discussion, everybody grab your dots, grab that single sheet of paper, without discussion I want you to think about where on that implementation matrix of emerging, developing, or sustaining are you with evaluation. And this is not a, you know, this is not a hardcore, you’re not going to have to show this to anyone. This is for your division leadership team, individually at this point in time, grab the dots and I want you to put it on there and just stack them. Say emerging, you know, three people think it’s developing, two people think it’s that. As a division just put your dots.


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00:15:02 Mr. Davis: This is making a nice little histogram basically, or bar graph, histogram type graph. So, so there, there, here is trick make sure I explain this correctly. If you have five people on your team how many dots should be on your paper? Woo hoo, occasionally I don’t make, my instructions get lost. [Tape Cuts] Wow, wow, yeah you know, to me that is like, you know, there seems to be some, and, and you all put them there on your own without discussion and coming to common agreement, dots did not collect dots because the superintendent did not put his or hers on the list first. 00:16:01 Mr. Davis: Not that that would ever happen. Okay, yeah I, yeah I work everywhere from the state level with state education agencies, to divisions, to local school districts, and I’ve been lucky enough to be like on the, the NASDE benchmarks, their blueprints of implementation. Lucky to be on the, the review committee, and in the years of conversations around that. And so, you know, it’s like occasionally I see dots collecting dots, and votes collecting votes, and it’s like you know, that goes back to that communication trust. So you know, you guys do not have to share with me where you are, this is just kind of an initial thought about where you are within the idea of evaluation. So we’ll be talking today about a variety of, you know, the different levels of evaluation. I’m going to be talking mainly system level type things. 00:17:02 Mr. Davis: Just making sure that we have things in place. The next activity I have for you guys, most table should have two pictures on them. If you, if you are a table that did not get a picture you’re probably a small table, so please join a table that has two pictures. And the first thing I want you guys to talk about briefly is what is the story of each picture? We give you like two minutes to talk about what is the story of each individual picture? 00:18:00 Mr. Davis: I can’t tell time, and when your mind runs like mine it’s been like five minutes. So did you all kind of figure out a story, the story of each picture? Yes, no? Is there no story to it, does it have no meaning to each individual card? Did you, what did people see? Anything, anybody have comments about the stories or anything? Respondent: The central office folks will see the big picture, kind of the view of that entire side of the aisle with the folks in the trenches, the teachers, the instructional assistants, those having to implement power up see the more up close view.


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00:19:01 Respondent: So the perceptions are often times very different. Mr. Davis: Okay, thank you. Any, anybody else have any different ideas or thoughts? Okay now we’re going to make this a little bit more complex, I want your table to now talk to the tables next to you and see if you see any connections. Okay? This is going to take a little bit longer, and I suggest that you, you, you know, I want you guys to see, you know, where does this story end? I, now everybody, each table has two pictures. I want to see where does this story begin and end. You need to talk to the other tables now. [Tape Cuts] That, okay here is a hint, if you get up from your chairs and walk over to the other tables. 00:20:07 Mr. Davis: It may work a little bit easier. [Tape Cuts] Respondent 2: Could you give a bigger hint please? [Tape Cuts] Mr. Davis: I would appreciate if everybody, you know, as you’re building your story, if you’re doing, this group over here is the overachievers apparently. If you would, you know, go up to the front of the room and kind of build your story. Yeah, I, I’m not really sure I think there was a school psychologist over there leading them. I, I don’t know if that has anything to do with it, but…[Tape Cuts] So if you guys, no I know you guys have cards, so think about your story. If, maybe there is not one. 00:21:02 [Tape Cuts] Mr. Davis: Sixty more seconds to put your story in line. I don’t know, where, wherever your story belongs. [Tape Cuts] Okay, did, did the story change for anybody from what you, from kind of what you thought the story was about? Respondent 3: What is the story. Mr. Davis: Yeah okay. Does anybody want to explain, describe the story? Oh okay, so here at the end you have, what’s the very first picture of it? Yes what is that? 00:22:01 Mr. Davis: The cone or the chicken head, what’s the end picture? Which is, the earth, yeah. You know, this is, so do you, oh okay, is, it’s, it’s a very tiny dot of the earth. Yeah, so the people that were in this section here when you were working on it initially


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what did you think the story was about? On a cruise shit, a what? A child and the toys, so okay. So, if you all want to come over here so you can see the story you may, cause I, I, when we’re done debriefing this I’ll actually let you have a break even cause that’s the kind of guy I am. So okay but then, by the time you get to this point did the story change from the kid? 00:23:02 Mr. Davis: And at this point what are we, what are we looking at, and what are we thinking the story is about at this point? Okay cruise ship, yeah and the cruise ship is actually on the side of a poster, or on a poster that’s on a bus. So, so you know, you have a rooster that’s in a cover, and then by the time you’re down here, now we’re looking at Arizona, cowboys and Indians, oh wait that’s a poster, but how did we get here? Yeah, but how did we get to the stamp? Watching TV where the bus is, which is this, so, so we missed a piece of paper that one piece of data there, so if you keep them going out a stamp on a letter, a mailman delivering it, on the beach, somebody is flying over the beach in the airplane. 00:24:11 Mr. Davis: Yes. Respondent 4: My team thought that this guy was smuggling drugs at first. Mr. Davis: Yeah, but he’s probably delivering mail. Yeah, for people your age it still exists I hear, not very well the post office is going under, but there is two people that still use the post office. Okay, and yeah, I’m just giving you a hard time I’m sorry that’s not appropriate, I’m bad. Yeah, I, I was doing a training once and during a break this lady comes up to me and she goes seeing you do this, this is my compliment you know, Steve said his yeah, the compliment to me was the lady comes up she goes, seeing you do this gives me such hope for my son. 00:25:00 Mr. Davis: I smiled politely and said thank you and left. So anyway, I apologize if I’m inappropriate and make fun, I don’t mean to be making fun of you. Okay, you zoom on out pilot flying over the world, the world smaller and smaller. So do you have, do you have information in, in your school district at all these levels? Or I’m sorry your division, I apologize. Yes in your division. But not everybody has all of it. Okay, so, so you know, so this starts, you know, from the world down, zoom down to the very top of a chicken’s head that is on the cover of a magazine that a kid is holding that’s on a billboard, so you know, and we’ll leave this playing on the board so you guys can come look at it on your break if you want.


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00:26:01 Mr. Davis: But the question is in a division where, which level do we look at? What, what are we normally, what are we normally concerned with as a division? Would you think, now but the story looks different down there doesn’t it? Yeah, if you pull out, you know, kind of like what we’re talking about, how do you make this leap to the stamp, you know, from the buses to the stamp? If you pulled these two pieces of information out you can’t. Thank you, this is, this looks kind of, this is a way to visualize and think about the, the evaluation process and the level of evaluation that should be occurring within a division and school buildings. 00:27:01 Mr. Davis: You know, because if you pull out and look at any piece of this in isolation alone you have a completely different story. So, you know, you think about as a division leadership team what am I thinking about. As a building leadership team what am I thinking about? As a part of a intervention team, collaborative group, grade level group, whatever what, what am I thinking about? As a classroom teacher what am I thinking about? Am I becoming too focused on a single part of the story that it’s messing up something else? So anyway, this book is called Zoom, it’s actually out of print, but you can find it occasionally. I know I’m probably going to hell because I tore a book up. My librarian in elementary school would hate me again, so I wasn’t liked as a child I’m afraid. 00:28:00 Mr. Davis: But anyway, so if you want to you can just lay those on the floor in orders and you want to come up and look at them. Hopefully this kind of helps you guys think about when you come back we’re going to be talking more about as a division leadership team, how do you put the processes in place, and do you have the processes in place to ensure that this system is, is available. Because it’s your, it’s your responsibility to keep that big picture in mind, which includes the low level detail. So we’re gonna take Cindi, I believe a 15 minuet break, 5:15? Dr. Cave: Ten. Mr. Davis: Ten. Dr. Cave: We will be back in here by 15. Mr. Davis: Okay, so we will be, yeah I will start talking again in 15 minutes. [Tape Cuts] I apologize about that, I was just chatting with Melissa because it’s kind of funny cause the state where I was a school psychologist and started working on this stuff was, you know, buddies with Minnesota.


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00:29:07 Mr. Davis: And they were, it would have been like ’98, ’98, ’96 maybe even kind of time blurs. But we were at a conference, there was a conference and there was a group of people that are all sitting there like yeah these sessions are boring. They’re not talking about what we want to talk about. And so they ended up sitting in the bar talking, and, and then from that the next year they all decided to skip that conference and just the 12 of them fly to a location and spend 3 days together, and skip the registration fee and buy a conference room at a hotel to have these types of conversations that you guys are, that you’re having. You know, and it was the early years of it, and it was, you know, slowly after 12 years grew into the National Innovations Conference. So yeah 12 people to there, yeah, and it was kind of funny. 00:30:02 Mr. Davis: I was, it was when the National, are you guys familiar with the National Center on Response for Intervention, yeah. The year that it was funded they, the day before they announced the official funding of it the feds invited ten, ten states one person from ten states to come and talk about what is it, what does a state education agency need from a National Center for Response to Intervention? And I, I got to go on behalf of Kansas, and was sitting there, and it was kind of cool. But the other funny thing was it was in D.C., and it was Monday, Tuesday in Washington D.C. talking about this, and there was also a person from Minnesota there. And we were chit chatting and then all of a sudden people are talking about what they’re doing the rest of the week. And she and I we’re like yeah we’re going to Long Beach, and everyone else including the people that were going to get the funding are like what are you talking about? I was like yeah the Innovations Conference, what you guys are talking about they’re doing at the other side of the nation. 00:31:01 Mr. Davis: So we flew across the nation, it’s like being on polar opposite ends of the nation seemed to be, you know, work, you know, it was kind of like this you know, yeah. The meeting in D.C. was here, the group in California that was meeting was down at the other end, and you know, it’s through the years the National Center on Response to Intervention, you know, they have been engaging more people and you’re starting to see a lot more really good stuff on their site. And you know, they’re starting to push down realize it is bigger than this, this tiny little thing that they were looking at. So this is some great stuff, but I was just like oh those were fun times. Yeah, by the way I am not change adverse, I’m king of a risk taker. So anyway, okay. I digress, thank you all, yeah. Thank you all for participating in the, the little activity. It, it really those type things are outside of my comfort zone.


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00:32:03 Mr. Davis: It’s always kind of get nervous when I try pulling those off, so thank you for being kind to me. Hopefully that will kind of make some sense to you guys as we work through. So tying it back to this benchmark activity you did here, you know, this is as you think about your evaluation plan in your division and the different pieces of it, you know, be thinking about are we truly getting, are we really looking at that whole continuum? You know, I was talking about the evaluation plan, our system as a whole, you know, one of the other things that you, that we see a lot in different states are things such as, you know, we have a system of school buildings or programs instead of an educational system. Early childhood, pre-K is not connected with elementary. Elementary kids are sent off to the middle school, who are, who then sends them off to the intermediate or the high school. It’s like, it is, it should be a continuum of services for that student. 00:33:07 Mr. Davis: It should be a, if you have, my guess take a crazy wild guess here, if I’m gonna guess that some of your districts have kids that are kind of mobile. Yeah, even, even within your own district, I wont’, I wont’ go as far to say about outside your I’m sorry district, division. Try to keep my language straight here. So division, even within your division my guess is that you have kids that are, that move around within the buildings. Think, when you think about that continuum of services and education within your division if each one of those buildings is doing it’s own thing and providing education for your students and deciding how they’re gonna go about that, that student could potentially receive the same instruction three or four times. Literally the same chunk of the Standards of Learning. 00:34:05 Mr. Davis: They may miss complete sections of it. They may, you know, it, it, if there is not consistency in what is happening not only in grade levels but across your buildings, you're gonna be, you’re gonna have, I’m trying to say you’re gonna have problems. Your students will struggle more. You know, and would you think about this big continuum here that there is different levels. For evaluation pieces be thinking about and I, I cannot take credit for this. This is a conversation with George Batsche, and that was, that happened, that it was an issue of you should be analyzing your data not just as kids you know, as cohort you know, by grade levels you go up, but by feeder patterns potentially. You know, is there a feeder pattern because of, you know, the school boundaries that something different is happening in? 00:35:06


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Mr. Davis: As we move up and when we say look at data, you know, we’re talking at everything not only of learning but of achievement, an also as far as outcomes, as far as you know, for graduation. Because at the end, you know, we really are talking about you know, our education system is graduation. So, I don’t know anyway just some thoughts. Random thoughts by Kevin. But anyway this activity here that we did is like I said, it’s just kind of a quick and dirty way to, to kind of give you a point, a reference of you know, how are we doing with evaluation? You could do this with every page, or every chunk of every section within the benchmarks if you wanted to. And that kind of gives you guys an idea about you know, where should we, where can we look at? 00:36:02 Mr. Davis: Where could we look at, what would we want to be thinking about doing next. You know, it’s not evaluating every item individually, you know, are we doing this, this, this, you know, it’s just kind of giving you that very quick, and makes for a nice easy graph. I’ve seen some schools take them and blow these up, put them on flip chart paper so that they can put them on the wall. Use the four by six sticky notes to build their graphs instead of dots, but you know, unless you’re technology savvy and you want to do by, I’ve seen schools do it with Survey Monkey too, and it builds the graph for you. But it depends on your people do they like, do they like, do they like playing with sticky notes I guess. So, okay so anyway, so thinking about this, the reason that you need to be looking at this whole, this zoomed in and zoomed out type thing. And I apologize, this, this GPS thing was a, a trip that I took a while back and I was just amazing cause I’d never seen a GPS with things that popped up. 00:37:02 Mr. Davis: You know, the evaluation you know, the, the guide, the implementation guide kind of guides you through your benchmarks. Your revaluation starts telling you things like hey alert there is a speed bump ahead. You know, it starts giving you warnings about what’s in your system. You know, you don’t want to sit there and wait for the system to crash. We need to be monitoring making sure things like hey there may be a speed bump ahead. Or alert dangerous bridge ahead. This is my favorite. Alert, sinking road ahead. I do not have to make these up. You know, your evaluation if you start looking at all these levels can tell you whether, you know, is it a system problem or a division, is a building that’s struggling for some reason, and as a division leadership team we are not giving enough support to that building to be successful. 00:38:04 Mr. Davis: You know, what is going on? Because you know, if we have these alerts ahead of time, you know, we can, I kid you not you can put the plastic tape up around the road that’s falling off the edge of the mountain which makes it all the safer from the truck that’s barreling down the road. So, you know, if you do the evaluation you can


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start doing things like that, say hey wait. You know, we don’t have time to fix this right now. We’re not sure; we haven’t done the problem solving process yet to figure out what the root cause it and what we’re going to do about it. But we need to be aware of this, we need to make sure that, that we put up some kind of safety nets around that. So that we don’t cause problems. It also sometimes tells us that, you know, we get there too late and it’s already caved in over the road and we have to clean it up. Which isn’t bad, you know, it happens. But you don’t want that to, you don’t want the mudslide go across the road, and you not know about it, and the teacher is sitting there trying to dig this out on her own. 00:39:03 Mr. Davis: We need to be there to support, and worse case scenario is you do not want to come around the corner and find this, and actually okay this is the one disclaimer. This is the one photo that I did not take, because the time we went around the corner the hole was bigger than that, and it was on the side of the mountain and I was too freaked to actually stop to think to get a camera, to take a picture of the fact that there is a huge hole in the middle of the road with no warnings at all. Because for some reason they had not been evaluating the quality of the roads at that section, and did not put the alert in that the road was sinking at that point. So moral of the story is your, your, your evaluation is going to be able to tell you things, and it gives you signs of the health of your system. It is, it is, you know, I think about, you know, this is kind, you know, kind of a system's progress monitoring type thing. 00:40:00 Mr. Davis: And years ago somebody told me this, ad I probably shouldn’t say it would make some people made. The purpose of progress monitoring is not to improve student outcomes; it is to change the behavior of adults. We progress monitor so that we know as adults that we need to do something different. We don’t progress monitor so the kid doe something different. The kid is doing the best he can with our support. The system is the same way, we need the progress monitoring because it’s gonna tell us as adults when do we need to think about doing something different. And, and it’s not, it’s not a grade or evaluating, it’s not evaluative as in a punitive type way. It’s just kind of a, a you know, a hey what’s going on? There may or may, you know, if you go, go back, you know, to the idea that, that you know, there is a sinking road ahead it may be a big deal it may not. It may just be a false sign that we, but we need to check into it. So anyway. 00:41:01 Mr. Davis: That is one of the things to be thinking about. Implementation research, Dean Fixsen have you guys actually had him in here?


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Dr. Cave: Yes. Mr. Davis: I have a professional crush on Dean Fixsen, and I’m embarrassed to admit. So yeah, okay anyway so I’m not gonna spend a whole lot of time on this because this will make me look really stupid, because you know, the implementation research is, and particularly at the systems level is a, is something you constantly have to read about it, think about it, try to apply it to your system. And, and this did he talk about this graphic and the implementation drivers to you guys a little bit? Yeah. Okay, so I, just briefly, so here at the bottom they have this concept of leadership. 00:42:03 Mr. Davis: You have a division leadership team; there should be a building leadership team. So, you know, this applies both, at both of them they change a little bit. Here on the left hand side, yeah okay when you’re looking at it it’s the left hand side you have these competency drives. The competency drives are kind of does our staff, so we have the right knowledge and skills and ability to actually do what we what we want to do and do it well? And, and here at the bottom, and here at the bottom, they had this, things down here are very technical. So, you know, you have this staff selection issue, it’s a very technical issue. And this is one of those interesting ones, particularly when you get to, when you’re selecting staff. If you are, I assume you all have teachers unions here right? No, no? Oh, lucky you. 00:43:01 Mr. Davis: That makes life a little bit easier, not that they’re bad. Just that they get nervous sometimes when you start talking about the idea of teacher selection. Why are the, why are the people that are put in coaching positions within the district to support buildings selected? Seniority should not be the reason. Why was that teacher selected to provide the intervention for this student? Just because they’re special Ed. teacher no? I guarantee you that there are many; there are some special education teachers that have amazing reading backgrounds. There are some special education teachers that at best came out of middle school math, and are now in elementary expected to teach students on IEPs reading. That, you know, and I, I am thinking of a very specific building I was in, and the staff selection from the leadership perspective became huge. 00:44:03 Mr. Davis: And it was a K-6 building, and it as they started talking, you know, they, they were having problems and it wasn’t’ just the special Ed. kids, but most of the kids that were getting reading intervention weren’t doing really well. They weren’t making progress, and they, we started talking about it. And it’s like, well you know, our special Ed. teachers is teaching some of them, our title teacher is teaching some of them, what’s going on? And you have this conversation, and neither one of them had


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particularly strong reading backgrounds. And not, not you know, saying that that’s bad for the teacher they knew their other areas very well. Come to find out the teacher in that building that was, that had the best grasp of being able to teach some of those early foundational reading skills, the sixth grade teacher. The sixth grade teacher had been a second grade teacher five years before in another district and just never bothered to tell anybody. 00:45:00 Mr. Davis: That teacher ended up becoming the reading intervention, one of the main reading interventionists in that building and it was an issue of staff selection. You would think, you know, if you’re teaching those foundational reading skills how many people would say oh let’s go look at the sixth grade teachers. You know, it, it’s one of those things, it doesn’t actually make, you wouldn’t automatically go there. But it’s an issue of staff selection. And as a leadership team that is a, a very technical type decision that needs to be made. Why are selecting the staff and doing the things that we’re doing? Are we putting the right people in place with the right skillset so that they can be successful? And so, anyway then you move on up these competency drivers, you know, it gets a little bit more fuzzy when you talk about training. How much training do you staff members need to be successful at this? And you know, if you’re talking reading intervention that’s one thing, if you’re talking about, you know, going more broadly. 00:46:03 Mr. Davis: Universal screening in your school buildings, you know, that is a competency issue of just training, and then you move on up here to the top level which they have labeled more adaptive. Which is more of that grey fuzzy area that becomes more challenging, and it’s the coaching piece of it. You know, just because I’ve trained you and told you how to do it doesn’t mean you do it well. You know, and it’s one of those things that, so that’s kind of the competency drivers on the one side. On the other side you have these organizational drivers, and those are the systems that thinks about what makes our system, our organization function. And at the bottom you have the data support systems, very technical. We have to be collecting the right data. We have to have it in a way, in a place it is accessible. It has to be in a way that it is understandable. It has to be aggregated at the right level, you know, be able, you know, those are just givens and very technical. 00:47:04 Mr. Davis: There is not whole lot of grey around whether they do it or they don’t do it. They either do or they don’t, and you know, if you need to make sure you get a very tech, you know, make that decision and support it consistently through the division. And moving on up you have this facilitative, administration, which is kind of in between. And


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this is one of those things where it really kind of comes into the idea of, of, I, I correct me if I’m wrong here. But I’m going to say that this is kind of the, kind of, within a division it would be similar to what you’re seeing, your DOE coaches, or your, your VDOE coaches doing. You know, it, it’s not that they, they are not just being technical saying, go in and do this, do this, do this, do this, but they are working with you and facilitating and coaching and nurturing and trying to help keep that system, and make sure that you have a system in place that is actually sustainable. 00:48:05 Mr. Davis: But you can’t just rely on an outside person, you must build that capacity within your division and within your buildings. Who is gonna be kind of tending that system? That when it’s necessary it’s gonna come back down and be very technical, or push up here to the top. The system intervention piece idea that, you know what? This, we’re about ready to go off a cliff and no one said anything, you know, you have, and you know, we need to change and do something for our system differently. And you know, this is up here in that adaptive, you know, orbiting the giant hairball of you know, that’s what you’re doing up here at this level. There is no nice easy clean answer there. You know, it, it’s the, that’s what the point you know, when somebody asks a question the answer is usually one of those lawyer answers of well it depends. You know, and, and you have to work through those issues. 00:49:01 Mr. Davis: And so, you know, so you have your leadership that has to be both, you know, over here, here, at all these levels. Paying attention to all of this stuff, and it’s only in all those places that you move up and you start getting your results. At the top of, those things, you see the performance assessment and fidelity measures. I am a huge, huge, I, I, if I actually had them in my suitcase I would have brought my soapbox and actually got on it. Because, you know, that to me that is actually an issue that you have to look at, and you have to monitor. And that is responsibility of the division leadership team. So you know, it and once again, you know, and that, you know, doing that little benchmark dot thing, graphing thing doing those type of things are some very quick down and dirty ways not the perfect way, but a down and dirty quick way to do kind of this fidelity to the bigger Virginia Tiered System of Supports framework. 00:50:07 Mr. Davis: How are we doing? It is, that is an example. I think probably later this afternoon and tomorrow you will get a whole lot more detail into probably those issue, if not we can talk about them. But so, that’s a big thing. Once again fidelity, the idea of monitoring progress, fidelity, all of these issues they cannot be punitive. That’s not, it’s not an issue of whether or not you’re doing your job, for the teachers especially. A division leadership team if they’re not doing I’d be hard to say that they’re not doing their


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job, I’m sorry. So you know, but the issue here is that you know, I, I…I guess I’m a, you know, optimistic cynic a little bit, you know? I’m very optimistic, and I can live in a rose colored world, and I see that vision of what we really really want. 00:51:08 Mr. Davis: I’m cynical enough to know that we can’t have the perfect world. Standing in my place even at the, and I apologize I’m going to put you on the spot here. Even sitting at the state department level, if a division says we don’t have the resources to do X, whatever the piece is, you know, any of the pieces that are not, that are included in that benchmark document. I’m hard pressed, I think I would say they should be hard pressed to say, oh don’t worry about it. You know, depending on the situation with, and this goes up to that system intervention, that adaptive leadership piece. You know, how do you decide what’s important. How do you prioritize what to do? If everything important, if everything is absolutely the first priority in your division nothing is going to be. 00:52:08 Mr. Davis: You know, I, I really think, you know, this type of thing is, I when you’re implementing this level a systems change, you know, kind of going back to the thing, you know, the ready, fire, aim issue. I think of this really as more of a shaping process. It’s, you know, we’re working towards, through you know, the shaping of the behaviors of our teams, of our teachers and everything toward this vision and these benchmarks we see. You’re not gonna be able to go in and do it perfectly the first time, and partially, then one of the main reasons is each of your divisions is slightly different. Slightly, see I’m optimistic. And so you know the issue is that, you know, you don’t get to opt out of doing these things because your division is different. 00:53:01 Mr. Davis: What you do is like my division is different so therefore it may look different, but the items that are in your benchmark, in the benchmarks document and the manual are issues around these are things that have been shown to be effective for instruction. And the more that you do, the more that you, the more of those practices you do and the better you do them the better results that students will have. So, you know, that’s gonna be one of those things, and I don’t mean to put that out there as being mean and callous about, you know, oh we expect you to do everything. It’s like, you know, you have to choose what is the priority in your district at that point in time. Sometimes I may be, it’s just a burning issue. You know, and we’ll, yeah we’ll talk about that a little bit later. So, anyway but you know, if you think about this thing, if you think about the documents, and the things, the items that are listed in the benchmark document as well as in the implementation guide over here on this side you can overlay the issue of your, the tiered, I’m sorry help me.


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00:54:14 Mr. Davis: The tiered intervention, yeah but no there is the document where they start describing the tiers and saying this is what we’re gonna use, I’m sorry. Tier definitions, you know, talking about, you know, here is the tier this is how you get in, this is how you get out of, how you enter the tier, how you exit the tier. When you go to the next tier, this is who is going to provide it, this is how long you’re gonna, you know, that document is down here on the, you know, decisions support systems very technical. But also it’s over here talking about the selection of who is going to be the intervention. It’s also the selection of what is the intervention going to be that we’re going to be using, and the training of them. 00:55:00 Mr. Davis: So you have professional development plan laid over this as well, so do you kind of, this, yeah okay anyway. I apologize this is way too much theory for you guys, okay. So we’ll go to some more interesting, more implementation research. Stages of implementation, say that I talk about this very briefly, just kind of tells the idea of just as a frame of reference. You know, two to four years to full implementation is, is for systems change as complex as this is pretty optimistic. You know, a lot, when they say two to four years when you look at their research they’re talking about implementation of usually single intervention programs. You know, and things, so you know, how many people here are less than two years into this? 00:56:01 Mr. Davis: Okay, a few. How many people are four or more years into this? Okay, a few. Yeah, yeah a few good, good. Yeah, and so you know, you have this idea of exploration trying to figure out, you know, what do we want to do, what do we need? Why would we want to do this? Your installation, putting it in place, describing what it is, what it’s not, what it’s not going to be. Getting the staff trained to actually do it, then you move into that initial implementation, which is usually messy. You know, the first time you learn to do something, and the first time you try it it’s messy, but that’s okay. Because we’re going to be doing coaching to support, and then you move into this full implementation when you’re actually doing it and doing it very well. This can, this I, when I think about these stages of implementation, and this is just for my sanity and so I feel better about myself, is that you know, when you’re talking about things as complex as Virginia Tiered Systems of Support, I don’t always think about this as the implementation of that. 00:57:13


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Mr. Davis: I will look at it and say things like my universal screening system, where are we with universal screening on this continuum? Where are we with you know, and think about those individual practices. And this is one of the things, and I’m thinking of the book. I think it’s, I think it’s actually in Finding Your Leadership Focus, they talk about the issue of implementing programs versus implementing practices. And if you say you’re, if you just talk about you know, the implementation of the Virginia Tiered System of Supports you’re gonna get lots of drift. And it’s, it’s, you know, what is it? Because your division is going to be different than your division, is going to be different than your division. Just a little bit. And so when you start talking about those practices saying, you know, our universal screening practice in our division is this. 00:58:02 Mr. Davis: This becomes significantly easier. You know the monitoring of fidelity becomes significantly easier. And so, you know, and at any point in time, you know, this whole system is just a whole bunch of things are up in the air. Sometimes you’ll be like oh my gosh we are doing it well, we’re doing great, and so you move on and start tending to something else. And you might slip down because of staff changes. Because of, you know, curriculum changes, you know, whatever, you know, and it’s not that it’s good or bad. The issue is are you, do you have a evaluation plan process system in place so that you know where you are within these issues? Does that make sense? 00:59:00 Mr. Davis: Okay yeah, Steve is talking about the importance of prioritization. And you know, that’s something that you’re constantly looking at, constantly tending to making sure that we are putting our effort where it is both correct, and where we’re going to get the most bang for our buck I think. Yeah. So more implementation research, and this is one that I, part of me is kind of nervous, I begin to think that this may just be my soapbox. Because I don’t hear very many other people talking about this issue when they are talking about implementation research. And it’s the idea of degrees of implementation, and this is in the original book, [The Synthesis of the Implementation ?] research. And honestly it in this little sidebar box, it’s not even in the text. So if you are not a box reader you probably skipped it, which I choose to believe that makes me smarter than everybody else that’s why they’re not talking about it. 01:00:02 Mr. Davis: Because I’m a box reader, so usually I assume it’s a crib notes. But so basically I said there is three types of implementation, or degrees of implementation. There is paper implementation, do we have a plan? And I am sure Virginia is different than most other states and schools I’ve been around, but many of like school improvement plans. You guys have school improvement plans right? It’s very pretty


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isn’t it? No? Yeah, a lot of them I see on paper it looks great. It says what we’re gonna do, when we’re gonna do it, how we’re gonna do it, the data we’re gonna look at and all these things. Great. They have paper implementation down, they say that roughly 60 to 80, I think the quote in the book is that 60 to 80 percent of innovations make it to paper implementation and that’s it. This next idea is process implementation, that’s going a little bit deeper. 01:01:03 Mr. Davis: We’re actually going through the motions. We’re doing what we said we’re going to do, we’re doing it well. Not we’re doing it, we’re following the plan you know, it says we’re going to meet weekly, we’re meeting weekly. It says we’re going to give this assessment, you know, three times a year, we’re giving the assessment three times a year. We are going through the emotions. The performance implementation is the highest level of implementation, which gets to are we doing it well? You’ve seen people that went through the motions but got nothing out of it, and you can put it in whatever context you want. But are we doing it well, and are we getting the results that we want? Is that issue of that level of, once you are doing that you are in performance implementation. And one of the, once again I think in pictures and other weird things, so, you know, and analogies. 01:02:00 Mr. Davis: I, I assume that most people here have, have chosen to exercise at some point in time. Either to gain weight, to lose weight because the doctor told you to so you could, your option was to give up smoking, or to give up cigars, or exercise. So you exercise or something, I don’t know. But, you know, to some extent most people at some point said I’m going to exercise for one reason or another. In my mind I think this whole idea of paper implementation I have paper implementation. I have went down to the gym, you know, my initial I’m going to join a gym. I go down to the gym, I buy a gym membership. So I am now a gym member to exercise. I have paper implementation of my exercise improvement. Congratulations, the next level is process. Did I actually go to the gym? 01:03:00 Mr. Davis: That’s a whole other thing, now you get the issue of yeah I went to the gym three times a week. Woo hoo, but now you’re at process and you’re going through the motions. Did you sit at the juice bar, or did you actually get on a machine? You know, did, were you one of the people that sat on the treadmill texting for ten minutes go oh I’m done. You know, that, that’s a different, you know, you’re going through the motions but you’re really not doing it well. That performance implementation is I’m going to the gym, I am doing all the right exercises and the right things I’m supposed to be doing for the frequency and the duration that I’m supposed to be doing, and guess what? I have


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the results I want. Whether, you know, whatever those results are. So does that kind of make sense on how you think about these different levels of implementation? 01:04:02 Mr. Davis: I am also a huge advocate for the idea that you do not skip these levels, these levels of implementation are not one time things. Implementation is a reiterative process, a repeating process. Yeah there are few words I know lots of synonyms for, but you know, the idea of, you know, you need a plan. Having that plan in place is very important, because that's one of the pieces that allows sustainability. My guess is that I know you all are dedicated, but you have other staff in your division that occasionally change jobs. And it’s like, you know, you do not want this to become something that one person holds the knowledge, and it becomes dependent on them. You also think about how do you on board new staff? How do they know what the expectations are, when they do stuff, what they’re supposed to do? 01:05:01 Mr. Davis: The idea of, that when the principal comes in to watch me that it’s really about them checking to see if they’ve given me enough support not evaluating what I’m doing. Does that make sense? Cause I choose to believe that teachers go to school every day with the best intentions to help kids and do the best they can. And they do the best they can with the knowledge, skills, and resources that they have. If they are, if a teacher in a classroom is not doing something, is not getting those results and not doing it well, I have a tendency to say the first place we should be looking is the leadership saying is that teacher getting that support? Do they have the resources? have they been trained? Have they received the coaching, do they have, and it’s, I know that running buildings are crazy and hectic, but I’ve been in classrooms where teachers didn’t have the materials for the interventions and thing. The curriculum they were supposed to be implementing. 01:06:01 Mr. Davis: And it was just simply an oversight because crazy new schedules, whatever. So you know, it literally is things as simple as how do you check to make sure the teachers have their materials. So, you know, that is one piece of it. Also the idea of this paper implementation. It really should kind of result in like almost a process handbook or procedures manual, or a operations manual or something. I don’t know what, whatever you want to call it. You know, it just, this is what we’re going to do and what we’re doing, because that’s what you need to be checking back to. You know, going back to the big picture system. How are you going to check that? You use that document to say here are the things we said we were supposed to be doing are we doing them? Your process, occasionally you know, if you get one of those warnings the road is sinking ahead watch out, and you need to change something that needs to be


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reflected back in your plan. Just to make sure for that communication issue, how do you tell teachers what they’re expected to learn? 01:07:03 Mr. Davis: How they’re going, you know, how are they going to be supported? So it’s this constant updating and monitoring of that paper implementation. Are we, have we, did we stop doing something because of a change in resources? When I say resources I mean time, money, staff those things, it could be anything. You know, did we, did we lose a staff and without thinking about it part of our system went away? You know, that was the teacher that did the interventions in this specific area. Whoops, we forgot about it, cause the new teachers that’s, doesn’t like doing that and so, you know, you need to monitor the fidelity and make sure that you are actually doing all those things that are in your plan. Your process evaluation, your monitoring that against your paper implementation, are we doing it like we’re supposed to in the process, and your performance are we getting the results? But these are constantly just circling around, around, and around. 01:08:02 Mr. Davis: You are applying the problem solving method to this constantly. You know, here is an example. Can you in the back read this? The dad is in the back says, he cuts the grass for ten minutes then he lays around the house all day. The kid is on the couch. I do yard work all day long, then I try to take a little break and now he’s gonna start getting on my case. You know, it’s, it’s an issue of perception. And so you use this paper, the paper, process, and performance, you monitor those so that we make sure that your understanding, that our perception, and our focus remains consistent. So I’m sorry, was it a comment for me or something else, oh okay that’s fine. You guys are a quiet group. Is it that boring? I’m sorry. Okay, you can overlay these to kind of see, you know, this is roughly what it looks like. 01:09:05 Mr. Davis: You know, exploration, you start building your plans. Installation you start putting your, that you start monitoring process making sure that you’re actually doing the training like you said you’re going to, the professional development. And once you get the initial implementation and start getting your data you actually start monitoring your performance. And make sure that you’re doing it well, and you’re getting the results that you want. And so that’s kind of how these things overlay. And pretty soon a meteorite hits and we all die, no. I know you’re all; yeah we have applause in the back hoping that meteorite comes soon. Thanks. Okay, problem solving model, a very simple problem-solving model. There are dozens of them, I don’t care what you use. It doesn’t matter. The issue is, do you choose one, do you use it, and do you use it consistently?


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01:10:01 Mr. Davis: I would highly encourage you to have one that is used division wide. Because when you start bringing people from the individual buildings, when building folks start showing up at division leadership teams, and working on district issues if we are all approaching the problem solving in a different way it’s going to lead to confusion. It’s going to lead to hurt feelings, probably to some distrust because Steve is trying to hide something because he won’t talk about the real issue, which is in one of the steps. You know, it’s a whole bunch of things. Choose one, choose it well, and, and train it, train it well, and practice, practice, practice. You know, and you, you, this is a very simple four step one. You know, there is one as simple I’ve seen is like look, think, act is like the simplest one I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen them go up to line nine or ten steps. It’s crazy. So but, you know, you overlay everything that you’re doing in your division. 01:11:01 Mr. Davis: You start talking about your, you know, the evaluation plan. You look at your evaluation plan, and the problem identification is the issue of, is there a problem? Do we have any warning signs, let’s evaluate, let’s look what we’re doing. What do we need to do? Then problem analysis guys there are some gaps what should that be? Then you move into improvement planning, then do you do the evaluation again checking in on how it’s going and blah, blah, blah. So you apply this to the paper implementation, to your process implementation, to your performance implementations, to your discussions at the, or on planning for students. A single simple model, you know, some folks talk about one slightly different for issues when you’re working as a division addressing resources. Instead of instructional issues, and if you’re interested in that I’ll be happy to talk to you about it, but I’m not gonna spend time around that. Cause, you know, if you do one and do it well I think most people are bright enough to be able to apply it to resources too. 01:12:04 Mr. Davis: But I may be overly optimistic, I don’t know. So okay, I’m tired of talking. So I’m going to let you guys spend a little bit of time in the manual real quick. So to make this a little bit easier let’s number off. I think I decided there were seven sections. See what happens, I have way too many notes. Oh I apologize I found it. Well we have five big sections. Introduction, leadership teams, curriculum instruction, and comprehensive assessment. So I just want to number off by tables and just have, and there will be multiple tables talking about the different sections. 01:13:02


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Mr. Davis: On page five of your handout, which is the yellow one, there is a set of questions. In an ideal situation I would love to be able to lead you through those questions and talk about those questions. Those questions are built in a sequence of order in terms of how they address things. So I’d encourage you to read the entire section that you’re assigned to, and then as a group start at the top question and kind of work your way down through them. Okay so start with the first one and just answer it, discuss it as a group, and move down through the questions. So and then just as a warning because I don’t want to surprise anybody at the end of it we’re just gonna do a quick reporting out of the first two questions by tables, and just to kind of so other people can have an idea about what’s happening in the guide, does that make sense. So a quick jigsaw, okay. 01:14:00 Mr. Davis: So we’ll start one…one, one, two…two, three, backs four, five. And fronts, one, two, three. Okay, so now we’re looking at this guide…yeah. 01:15:00 Mr. Davis: Yeah, yeah, so on the back of your first page of the table of contents if you need it. Introduction is section one, leadership second two, yeah. Yeah, introduction is number one, leadership teams is number two, curriculum is number three, instruction is number four, comprehensive assessment systems number five. [Tape Cuts] I am going to assume that people will want lunch in a few minutes. If it’s any incentive I hear that the restaurant is by the bar, I don’t know what that means. They said tell them to go towards the bar they might be more willing to go, I don’t know. So okay. 01:16:01 Mr. Davis: Quick like a bunny in a hayfield we’ll go through these. So groups that did, did the introduction just very quickly what are some of the key, what were some of the things that jumped out at you that you were like wow that’s interesting, that’s new, I’m not sure about that, I disagree with that, what were the big things that you reacted to in the introduction? Group one who did group one? Respondent 5: Well at our table we talked about the core of RtI being problem solving. And then using that data to, or using data to guide instruction for students. We started talking about the steps to problem solving, and we realized that there are many times we come around the table, that, you know, we just kind of jump the steps. 01:17:04 Respondent 5: We don’t typically, or we may not typically identify the problem and then analyze the problem, so our discussion was around immersing our whole culture in the


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problem solving processes, the steps with anything and everything that we deal with in our division whether it is at a student level, a parent level, a division level, or at the, at the school level we make sure that we always follow this process in identifying the problem, analyzing the problems. Just going through that process. Mr. Davis: Very nice thank you, thank you. And do you have anything is that your or did you have something else? Respondent 6: One of the things that we were discussing was the clarification about the tiers of intervention, and that the tiers don’t describe the intensity, I mean do not describe the student, they don’t describe a program, they don’t describe, you know, you don’t have to fail tier 2 to go on to tier 3 supports. 01:18:06 Respondent 6: And we were talking about how it is really helpful to view this as a continuum of support, and you know, not there being definite lines between the tiers, and we were also looking at the emphasis on the attention that needs to be given to professional development, to guided practice for, and coaching for the exact kind of what she was talking about, even in the problem solving process and all those things before we actually have internalized those practices instead of just, you know, having like a step list but we don’t really have the internal understanding of that. Mr. Davis: Thank you. Good, good. Anybody else from group one, from the introduction piece that had anything that jumped out at you that you want to share with the people that did not read it so they will want to, or maybe not want to for that matter, I don’t know. 01:19:02 Mr. Hale: I can’t make anybody do that. Respondent 7: Really how everything integrates especially how special education really does integrate into the system, and then just some of the particular of system change, and it affirmed the need to make sure that everything you do links into the framework. So no matter what you’ve taken on, what you’re working on, e-portfolio books, that means we’re working on tier one in core instruction. Things like that so that everything likes were our big takeaways.

Mr. Hale: I think we have one here. Respondent 8: The one we’ve had a couple conversations about the special Ed. services and in looking at this, and looking at the introduction one of the things that we focused on and had conversations about is when we go into IEP meetings looking at not


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necessarily what’s, what’s broken with the child, but what we need to do in order to improve student achievement, and improve data. 01:20:12 Mr. Davis: Okay thank you. Okay, let’s go the second section, number two. Mr. Hale: Here we go. Mr. Davis: Leadership teams, thank you I lost the clicker some, oh it’s over there number two. Respondent 9: Some things that stood out to us is the purpose to build capacity as the division team is the purpose to build capacity, and I don’t think we quite looked at it that way but really that’s that it is. And that also team members need to be individuals with decision making authority, we have a lot of people on our team but they’re not necessarily people who hold the purse strings, and they need to be there as well. And we need to build our program with sustainability in mind. 01:21:03 Mr. Davis: Great thank you yes, those are all some very critical points, something else? Respondent 10: Going along with that we feel like we’ve been sustaining in this process, but we have a lot of turnover now. New people coming into it, so maybe it’s a time to go back and look back at our whole mission, vision, plan, our paper plan. That maybe we haven’t addressed before, and we talked about the same thing, maybe some of those key decision makers. But I do want to point out that it can be done without those people at the table, so don’t feel like it’s an impossibility. Cause it can be done, it’s nicer when you have those people there, but when sometimes if you’re from a small or large division it’s almost impossible because your hands are in so many different things. Mr. Davis: Yeah, and you know, as far as those decision makers on that team, you know, if they, I actually like to say even go as far to say if they abdicate their responsibly and decision making authority to that team I’m okay with that. 01:22:11 Mr. Davis: You know, if what, the, what happens is when a team is told to do something and they come they say we have this great plan here it is, and somebody looks at it and goes yeah that’s not gonna work. It’s not gonna happen because it costs money I disagree with that, I dah, dah, you know, the likelihood of them going back and trying again seriously. You know, it kills momentum, so, you know, whether they give that


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authority to somebody else, or but it, yeah. It’s just making sure that they have the buy in, and then also you know, talking about the sustainability and the paper plan. I really think that professional development plan is a critical piece that needs to be well articulated in your plan, because and it includes not only initial training, you know, as you start. But it’s like okay so now what happens when we have new teachers? 01:23:00 Mr. Davis: What happens if we have teachers, who is going to coach and support a teacher that’s struggling to do each one of those pieces well. You know, and that, that’s that constant, that’s refinement. You know, I’ve talked to some building, like you know, what does implementation look like after we’re doing all this? It’s like yeah more of the same but better. You know, so it’s like Groundhog Day the movie. Everyone, there is really some people here that are old enough to remember that move. I was some place they didn’t know that movie. Other tables? Respondent 12: Two, I’m we’ll just mention that we talked about making sure you have the right people on your team, we talked about like it mentioned having actual school board members and people that need to understand why we’re asking for what we’re asking for, and why we need them there for the sustainability and able to move forward. Parents, having parents, these are things we realize we don’t really have on our team, so we might want to reconsider. 01:24:04 Mr. Davis: Thank you, thank you. Other things from section two? Respondent 11: The first page there is a bolded item regarding [Inaudible]. Mr. Davis: And actually that, that book is a, I really love that book. I could spend a whole day talking about keeping RtI on track. Like Vanderheyden and Tilly, you know, two of the people that I think are brilliant. Mr. Hale: We have one more. Mr. Davis: Sorry. Respondent 12: We talked about the communication plan, we just really liked that. We thought it was a really good idea, so if you haven’t looked at that section that would be something to really check out. We also looked at the leadership team’s primary responsibility being able to establish procedures, and and somebody else said to build capacity. 01:25:04


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Respondent 12: And we were thinking what if somebody on that team were to win the lottery, you know, what would happen to the initiative within the division, that kind of discussion. So we’re very hopeful over here. Mr. Hale: Thank you. Mr. Davis: Very good, thank you. Anything else from the leadership team section that caught people’s attention? And would you believe I laid it down again. The curriculum section, groups three. What were some of the conversations there? Respondent 13: In our section we talked about, well in our section it covers the core curriculum as well as the curriculum for the tier two, tier three interventions. And you know, in our, we felt in our school division that the core curriculum was pretty well covered and that teachers knew exactly what they needed to teach. 01:26:02 Respondent 13: But we didn’t have so much of an inventory for the curriculum for the tier two, and tier three interventions, and that it would be a good idea to really look at what we have, and who is using it, and how to make connections. And whether or not you can really support in our case, you know, 90 schools that are using these different interventions, but you could at least connect the dots to, to let teachers and schools find support within each other, and support each other that way. At least see what’s out there, what’s effective, and kind of where you could go if you needed more help, and more interventions. Mr. Davis: Great. Thank you. Anything else from the curriculum section? No I see. Mr. Hale: Why are they hiding, why are they hiding the curriculum people? Mr. Davis: I don’t know apparently it said nothing interesting. And one of the, I did stop by this table of, I apologize, this was involved in their conversation. 01:27:02 Mr. Davis: And in that section it talks about you know, identifying what are the, what’s the curriculum materials that are used for tier two, tier three? And the question of, you know, how many do you, you know, allowing for the, the differences within each building versus having a division choose it type thing. And it, it turns into this issue of, you know, I don’t know that there is too many or too few, I say that you have too few protocol interventions, or too few interventions identified if you do not have enough to match the students’ needs. If you have identified students’ needs and you do not have an intervention for it, then you probably have not enough. You have too many of them in


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your district or building or division or building potentially at the point that you cannot support it, and the teachers are given a book or a program and said here figure it out. I, I, you know, I really believe that it’s division and or building responsibility to build the capacity of teachers to train it. 01:28:01 Mr. Davis: Which means, you know, who is going to be the one that provides the training, the provides the coaching, the ongoing support in helping them understand when, what student need matches to that intervention? How is that done? And if you have too many of them I don’t know how you can adequately support staff. I think that this type of system, a, like Virginia Tiered Systems of Supports the issue of supporting staff is just as critical as supporting students. You know, that’s why you’re putting these systems in place so that staff are not left on their own trying to, to solve these bigger systems problems. One kid at a time, so I’ll get off that soapbox. Anything else curriculum? Yeah, these are pretty late. Yeah, okay there was also discussion in this section about tight, lose. And this is I think kind of big kind of thing, you know, he benchmarks are pretty lose. 01:29:00 Mr. Davis: It gives you some big ideas about how, how, how it should be. You know, here are the practices, the principles and practices that you need to be doing as a division, in your division. In your division the division looks at that and says based on our current, our current situation the nuances and the different individuality of our division, here is how we take those and translate them in and operationalize them in our district. And it becomes, it takes, it’s not gonna be different it’s just going to narrow them and just put more detail around it. And then at the building level it even becomes tighter to this, saying okay the divisions says we’re going to do it this way. Now how do we, what are our options so that we have, you know, within that division decision to meet the individual, and the nuances, and the different characteristics of our building? But still within that district framework. Because this going from lose to tight, allows support. 01:30:04 Mr. Davis: They know what you’re working on loosely, and they can come down and support you here. Because they know conceptually what you’re working on. These people can then support these people because they know conceptually what we’re working toward. If we’re all picking and choosing what we’re working toward you’re all on your own. So that’s a tight lose concept that, so. Instruction, I apologize we’re a little bit long, I think there is one more section, instruction any comments? Mr. Hale: We got one here.


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Respondent 14: We thought the big ideas from instruction were that we had a lot of little discussions going on too, like supporting but the big ones were schedules must support your priorities for instruction. 01:31:01 Respondent 14: And differentiation must be for all students not just the students in tier two, tier two and three. That you must have instructional integrity for making sure that what you want to have as instruction is being done, and that the division leadership team once again we went back to trust. Using problem solving and being able to report out and learn from each other through that reporting system. Mr. Davis: Thank you. Any comments from the other sections that read instruction? Respondent 15: Okay our team discussed instructional expectations by grade level; we recently developed some instructional expectations by grade level because we’re concerned with the instructional integrity, and the fidelity to the core. 01:32:02 Respondent 15: And we discussed protected time. We also discussed the need for vertical planning. Mr. Davis: Great thank you. Anything else? Okay the fifth section, comprehensive assessment system, there was a bunch dumped into that one huh? Just small things, thoughts? Reactions? Respondent 16: Thank you, I was like my section is not talking. Respondent 17: A couple of the things that we really thought were the big ideas was the whole consistency through the assessment, and across all levels. Cause we do it, we’re doing a great job at elementary but that’s kind of where it ends. 01:33:04 Respondent 17: The universal screening and having people understand the purpose behind it, cause I think our teachers are still struggling with that. And then consistency, oh that whole difference between progress monitoring interventions, but also still continuing to progress monitor the core instruction. I think one more, and that this is a journey and that we’re trying to improve these practices, and have fidelity, and all of that. And really focusing on that impact on student learning. Oh wait one more, oh throwing out things that we don’t need to do anymore, and really don’t work.


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Mr. Hale: Yeah that’s huge. Here we go. Respondent 18: One of our kind of, oh thanks. There is no baby yet right? We felt like it was really important to choose the appropriate assessment to match your need, what you’re looking for. 01:34:00 Respondent 18: And as we were discussing we found that we had a whole in the diagnostic area, and it’s something that we need to work on. And that we’d done some resource mapping of our assessments, but we, we need to address what we found. Mr. Davis: Great. Yeah, great thank you. I, we see a lot of divisions in buildings that have a lot of redundancy in their assessments. Mr. Hale: Yes this is a whole day workshop almost. Mr. Davis: yeah, yeah I’m trying so hard to not make comments cause I know the time. Anything else assessment systems. Okay, great. So basically what we hope you’ll do is, you know, this guide will help you, is something that you can use to kind of go back to help guide your revisiting your plans, as you do your paper implementation and check up on it. So anyway, with that I apologize horribly for taking an extra eight minutes. 01:35:02 Mr. Davis: Nine minutes, lunch is down the hallway to the left. In the restaurant, so don’t get distracted and go in the oh, oh to the restaurant and hang a left. Okay, great thank you all. We will be back and on o’clock.

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Response to Intervention - VDOE to Intervention Cohort training session: ... is going to give you concrete examples, ... everybody has GPS right, or have seen them? Yeah,